Looking Back: 5/13

Monday

May 13, 2013 at 12:01 AM

50 years ago this week: Top military officers arrived in Birmingham and 3,000 infantrymen, paratroopers and other units had been moved to Alabama after a weekend of bombings and rioting in the racially troubled city. Gov. George Wallace appealed to Alabama congressmen to keep the federal troops out.

Top military officers arrived in Birmingham and 3,000 infantrymen, paratroopers and other units had been moved to Alabama after a weekend of bombings and rioting in the racially troubled city. Gov. George Wallace appealed to Alabama congressmen to keep the federal troops out.Harold Greer, principal at Tuscaloosa High School, was elected president of the Tuscaloosa Lions Club.U.S. District Judge H. Hobart Grooms ruled that the University of Alabama was bound by injunction against discrimination of Negroes seeking to register as students and ordered Dean of Admissions Hubert A. Mate to show cause why he should not be held in contempt for failing to follow provisions of the 1955 injunction.The Tuscaloosa Junior Chamber of Commerce was planning construction of a $24,000 Civic Center to be built at the Jaycee Park in Alberta.Dr. Lee Bidgood, dean emeritus of the School of Commerce and Business Administration, died at 79.The town of Gordo made Astronaut Gordon Cooper, whose nickname was “Gordo,” an honorary citizen of the town after Cooper’s successful 34-hour 22-orbit flight.

Jimmy D. Collins, president of the First State Bank of Tuscaloosa, was named Citizen of the Year by the Tuscaloosa Civitan Club.Under an agreement with the landfill owner and residents of the area, Tuscaloosa would temporarily dump its trash at a landfill next to the Sky Ranch neighborhood and would pay almost twice its annual dumping fee to do it.The mother of former University of Alabama fullback Richard Bryan, slain in rural Choctaw County in 1984, filed a civil suit accusing Robin Parkhouse, a member of the 1971 football team, and two other men of conspiring to kill her son in retaliation for his participation in a criminal investigation of illegal activities of the three.Northport city officials were protesting a proposed 50 percent rate increase by West Alabama Cable.George S. Shirley, prominent banker and civic leader, announced that he planned to retire on June 30 as president and chief executive of the First National Bank of Tuskaloosa, an AmSouth Bank. He would be succeeded by Carl W. Albright Jr.Tuscaloosan Val Carpenter, 34, was the 1988 winner of the World Series Championship Limit (poker) Tournament, winning $223,000.A Fayette woman, Barbara Berry Fowler, was on trial, charged with murder in the slaying of her husband, pharmacist Stephen Fowler, who died from a single stab wound to the chest.

UA confirmed that former football coach Mike Price would contest his firing.The U.S. Coast Guard suspended it search for a Northport man, Scott Bjorn, who fell from the Panorama deck of the Carnival cruise ship Conquest on the last day of his honeymoon cruise to Mexico with his wife of two weeks, Renee Bjorn. His body was found two and a half days later off the coast of Mississippi.Construction was set to begin on a $4 million expansion for Alabama Paper Products in Tuscaloosa that would increase the plant by 31,500 square feet and create 21 new jobs. The company used recycled paper products to make roofing materials.The Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke at Bethel Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, after calling for an investigation into the University of Alabama’s decision to hire Mike Shula rather than Sylvester Croom as its football coach.Dr. Kenneth Hall filed a reverse-discrimination lawsuit against Bryce Hospital, accusing the hospital and its employees of making the work environment so hostile that employees who were not African-American resigned.

Coca-Cola and UA football coach Paul W. “Bear” Bryant might be forever linked, but it was Pepsi that would be sold on campus. Buffalo Rock, the Pepsi distributor, offered to pay the university a higher percentage of sales than Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola would continue to serve athletic facilities, however.The DCH Health System board of directors voted to proceed with a new four-story addition that would accommodate at least 72 private rooms in the location of the old cancer center after construction of the new cancer center was complete.In a precedent-setting case, a Tuscaloosa man, Jamie Witherspoon, was convicted of murder after a clerk in a Raceway convenience fatally shot his alleged accomplice in a robbery attempt, Eric Baggett. Witherspoon was sentenced to 35 years in prison.District Judge Joel Chandler found probable cause to continue prosecution of three suspects in the shooting death of Phillip Bartlett, owner of the Bart Mart convenience store in Northport. Jack Jones was charged with capital murder along with brothers Bobby Wayne Ledbetter and Shawn Ledbetter.

The UA softball team defeated Florida 10-1 to become SEC champions.Russell DeBusk, one of three men who pleaded guilty to arson charges in a series of 2006 rural Alabama church fires, asked for early release from prison. Tracey Grisson of Akron was accused of shooting her estranged husband until the gun was empty before calling 911.Former Northport City Councilman Robert Thomas announced plans to run for mayor against mayor Bobby Herndon and former mayor Harvey Fretwell.Ground was broken on two downtown student housing sites, Boulevard Lofts and Townhomes at Metal Works.The U.S. Postal Service announced that it would close the Tuscaloosa mail processing center. Its functions would be moved to Birmingham.

Compiled by retired news librarian Betty Slowe.

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